Drags And Drugs
by Reno Spiegel
Summary: Vincent's midnight thoughts, his brothers' rave one room over, and a trip to the convenience store.


Author's Note: Pre-Turk Vincent vignette. Now, I'd like it to be known, this is AU, and the first person flaming me for an OOC character gets socked in the face. Feeling inspired by NaNoWriMo that I screwed up and missed, so I'm trying to save myself in the last stretch. Or something. God, I'm bitter... xD;  
  
Drags And Drugs  
by Reno Spiegel  
Dante@towernetwork.net  
  
"Think he's alive?"  
  
One drag.  
  
"Guess so."  
  
They always sound so tsense when I do this, stay laying on a mattress in this old, creaky house we dare call home. Old and creaky it may be, but the silhouettes in the doorway, their shadows stretching over my bare chest as I try my hardest not to get ashes in my eyes, are framed by the purple lights of a party, known for a mile around by the insane techno beat coming from the large room, what was probably a hobo's ballroom a long time ago.  
  
"Should we invite him in, Pete?"  
  
"Hey, Vin-Boy. Wanna come join th'party?"  
  
Two drags.  
  
Heavy on the exhale.  
  
Everything is code these days.  
  
"Yeah, well, if y'need anything, just hollar at me or Tseng, y'know?"  
  
Yeah, I know. I'm perfectly capable of moving, but for the last four days I've been laying here, smoking and drinking soup through a straw. Eight-hundred and forty-nine thousand, three-hundred and seventy-nine little dots in this smoke-stained, piss-colored ceiling pattern. Soup and smokes, that's all I need. We run drugs out of the house, drugs that I've grown domestically for the three months we've holed up here, and so we can afford good food and shitty cigarettes.  
  
I like the cheap ones.  
  
The door creaks shut behind Pete and Tseng, my two boneheads for brothers, but I know Pete is standing right outside the door, ear pressed to it. They're worried about me; truth be told, I just don't feel like leaving this overly-hard mattress with the mold growing on the very edge of the bottom-left corner. I've got my own grooves in this thing by now. I haven't uttered a word in these ninety-six-plus hours I've been laying here.  
  
I get up only to piss, and that's when they're out of the house. Then I reassume the position and pull another cylinder from the box.  
  
Three drags.  
  
Our parents died in the ShinRa/Wutai War about a year back, right after we all came to Junon to go to technical school. It's a known fact that Wutai offers the best self-defense, Midgar the best military, and Junon the best everyday education. Our parents, defying the word of the witch doctor who had named us -- traditional custom, names changed when we moved to fit in better, aside from Tseng, who vows to carry the name until he dies -- saying we needed the self-defense courses.  
  
By defending ourselves, we would have killed ourselves.  
  
I hear the door slam to the room by my head, followed by loud banging. It's Pete's room, but he never uses it for sex; no one's dared to touch him since he started saying he pierced his ears with needles found after ever rave he went to, a lie so he wouldn't get some random girl pregnant. With all the checks they run for stuff like that around here, and our only income being my precious marijuana, we'd be dirt-poor and SOL.  
  
Four drags.  
  
Quick exhale.  
  
The thought of losing this place, though we don't legitimately own it -- the affirmative BANGBANG of a headboard in the room over seconds me -- doesn't suit well with any of us. We're called The Stoners Three by some people around here, though Tseng and I tend to keep out of it. Sure, Tseng's a regular stoner to even his temper out and I get high once in a great while just for the old sensation, but Pete's tried everything on the streets.  
  
Ashes fall and grace my ear, but they don't really bother me.  
  
Heavy, thudding footsteps come toward my door, followed by a demand to be told what Pete's guarding so thoroughly behind that door. I half-expect the door to fly open, but my brother tells him to "fuck off and mind yer own, a'ight?" and then he's gone. I half-smile.  
  
So gentle in your stern way, aren't you, Pete?  
  
I see a dark shape flit across the ceiling, but it's followed by no noise. I've been seeing things, blurs of black, shooting across the room from time to time past about ten o' clock every night. I think one of the purposes of this little lay-in is to see what's going on inside my twisted little mind.  
  
The bass thumps.  
  
The headboard bangs.  
  
Five drags.  
  
My cigarette smolders and hisses.  
  
Something, maybe a rat, skitters across my chest, and I know it's no figment of my imagination, because I hear it land on the floor. No harm done, little buddy. I blink for the first conscious time in God-knows-how-long, and it feels as if I'll never open my eyes again, like I'll never need to. After sleeping only when Pete and Tseng are out, the full two days without it isn't wearing me down as much as I thought it would.  
  
Images of Mom and Dad go by my closed eyes, clipping me right before I open them again. I sigh loudly through my nose and close my eyes again.  
  
Dad... If you only knew that I was the only one who finished school, just like you always wanted all of us to do together...  
  
Mom... I'm so sorry for how all of this turned out, what with Pete's drugs and Tseng's illness.  
  
Yeah. He slept around too much; the doctors give him another two years tops with treatment, which is why I started growing and dealing. I give three-quarters of the profit to him so he can do what he pleases with it, be it treatment or food. I don't want the shit, that's for sure. I'm fine with my dollar-a-pack cigarettes and my beaters and cargo pants.  
  
Hi, I'm Vincent Valentine, graduate of Junon Technical University for the Mentally Advanced.  
  
I deal drugs from a dank, nearly-condemned house with my two brothers, our basset hound that's missing a quarter of an ear and an eye, and anyone else we find sleeping in the guest room. Sometimes it's empty, sometimes there are four naked guys with a pile of used condoms, sometimes there are people who just walk in one night and leave in a few days without a word to us.  
  
No one minds; we're not worthy of death. We're Valentines. We live for-fucking-ever. We want to die, sure, but no one ever lets us, except when everyone's left us behind. The key to this family is sticking together; if you're all alone, you die in a flash.  
  
Six drags.  
  
I open my eyes, sigh, toss the cigarette, and stand up, my knees and back popping in one sickening sound, my feet tender as they hit the cold floor. August is not a good time for temperature in Junon. Beautiful, but shitty.  
  
I walk across the floor to the door and wrench it open, surprising Pete, who stutters. Tseng, eyes wide, is also watching me from the center of an oblivious crowd. I take my shirt which has been hanging on my shoulder and wipe my forehead, sweat popping up from the sudden change in atmosphere.  
  
Pete finds his voice. "V-Vin-Boy. You lookin' for somethin'?" I grin at him, my lips quirking up, and toss him a cigarette I just found in my pocket. It's still good; he'll smoke it later.  
  
I shake my head a bit and stretch to rid myself of the stiffness in my arms. "Pancakes."  
  
"W-What the hell are you talkin' about?"  
  
It's Pete's concerned voice, not his scared voice. He's a big man at six-six and two-eighteen, not one to be scared. I nod at him. "Hungry. Gonna run to the Twenty-Four and grab some Insta-Cakes. You want anything while I'm out?" I reach for the hook right next to my door and remove my leather jacket, then put it on and check the twenty-eight gil in my left pocket. I have a system for everything.  
  
Tseng has come over by now, giving Pete one of his looks. "Pancakes," he drones, sounding amazed at his own voice, and I ask Tseng if he wants anything. He says to grab him one of the new Kirin Fires that just hit the Twenty-Four. Pete shakes his head, lights my smoke, and I walk out the door like there isn't some massivee rave-orgy going on in the middle of what I tend to call home.  
  
The cold air is biting as I light another smoke, being as how I know the only guy who ever works nights at the Twenty-Four -- named such for its hours -- and it's nearly two AM as of now and he'll let me smoke inside. The store is a quick walk across the street and down two blocks from out rickety shack we call a house -- no one bothers us about the noise because they make just as much.  
  
I stroll into a hazy Twenty-Four, made that way because it appears a pipe is leaking on the ceiling and my friend Copét is too lazy to fix it. He waves lazily at me as I walk in, half-watching the store and half-reading a book. but he has a lazy eye that tilts all the way up to the edge of his eye, so he could be doing either one, as far as I know. I just walk to Aisle 8, knowing this store as well as its owner, and grab the Insta-Cakes. Put them in the microwave for thirty seconds and you've got fluffy pancakes with a small sac of syrup held in the middle. Puncture it with your fork and it oozes everywhere.  
  
Good shit if you do it right.  
  
I head to the back wall and over to the flashy display of twenty-four packs of Kirin Fire, a new energy drink always advertised on television and now in every store on the Planet. I amble back up to the front, stopping only to grab a pack of pills that are supposed to increase the amount of sleep a person gets. They work to some extent, but the ones that work instantly are known to have some bad side-effects.  
  
Running two days with no sleep will drain anyone. I head back to the register and slap my stuff down infront of Copét, a guy here in Literary School from Mideel. He rings me up and it comes to twenty-five even. I give him the appropriate amound of gil and stand there for a moment. His book is down and he's trying his best not to look at me.  
  
"Not going to ask about the pills, Copét?"  
  
"We both know Tseng doesn't always go for his treatments, Vincent. I know damn well that anyone in the position of having their twin brother" -- we look alike only if you pretend he doesn't have the wrinkles from the treatments he does get -- "able to die any minute wouldn't be sleeping too well. Not to mention your older brother's drug habits, and I'm not poking fun; I wish you three only the best of luck."  
  
I heave a sigh. "Damn, man, I just don't know what to do anymore. Pete's going to get in a load of trouble, the whole neighborhood knows that, and Tseng, we can't even pretend nothing's happening there. I mean, he slices his finger with a butter-knife and it's like a lockdown. That and --"  
  
"I hear the Kirin Fire's not too bad, by the way," he says casually, but I pass him over.  
  
"-- with Mom and Dad gone, we're having a load of financial troubles. If the sole source and keeper for the money dies in Wutai, and no relatives are living there at the time, the money goes directly to the government. It's such a fucked-up system."  
  
Copét clicks his tongue as I take a drag off my cigarette, blowing it at the ceiling where the pipe is and ashing onto the grey tile floor. "Well, Vin-Boy," he says, and grins when I flash him a disapproving look. "Go home, make your Insta-Cakes, get some sleep and deal with it when you wake up. God knows you're pale as hell these days. Go to the beach, check out the city. Don't just mope around."  
  
I nod lightly, mutter my thanks, and walk out the automatic door toward our place. I cross the street in a very illegal spot, but no one actually goes after jay-walkers in a place like this.  
  
I walk back inside, the door almost completely-off to our porch, and shove my shoulder into the second one to the main house, which expands and retracts with the moisture in the air. Tseng's leaning against the wall, and looks right at me when I walk in, like he was waiting for me. I toss him the Kirin Fire and slide the Insta-Cakes into the kitchen, pocketing the pills.  
  
Tseng tips the bottle to me and takes a drink after saying "Thanks." I shrug it off and lean next to him, tilting my head back and looking at the weakening ceiling. It's about then that my brother says what's on his mind. "Vincent...I'm gonna try to get back into the tech school."  
  
I look at him, taken aback, opening my mouth to ask why he's considering it, but he cuts me off with the not-so-obvious answer to the obvious question.  
  
"I just...Dad wanted us to all go through tech school...and I know he'd be proud if I did it, especially considering..." His voice trails off, and I know he wants to look at me even as he hangs his head.  
  
In this moment, I have more respect for Tseng, who we all still consider the little one though I was actually born second because I'm six inches taller than he, than I have in my twenty-three years. I clap him on the shoulder and nod, ruffling his hair with the same hand. "Dad would be real proud of you right now. Mom, too. Keeping the family name, keeping the promise you made to him before we left despite the circumstances..."  
  
He looks at me curiously, as if he expects something more. I break into a wide grin, ignoring everything around me for a moment -- the various drugs, the loud noise, the gyrating bodies.  
  
"Our little Tseng is growing up."  
  
I haven't seen that sparkle in his eyes when he laughs since we went to Wutai for the funeral.  
  
-Fin  
  
Sidenote: Kirin Fire is an actual energy drink in Japan. The commercial was done -- one of them -- by Okabe Satoru with Stevie Wonder. A promotional CD was released that wasn't too shabby, either. I know what I'm talking about. =P  
  
November 22/23  
11:08 P.M. - 1:36 A.M. 


End file.
